Money and Credit - March 2017

Our monthly Money and Credit statistical release is made up of three parts: broad money and credit, lending to individual and lending to businesses.

Published on 04 May 2017

Key points from the data to the end of March 2017 include:

Broad money, M4 excluding intermediate other financial corporations, increased by £10.1 billion in March (Table A), with positive flows for all sectors (Tables B-D). Within this, households’ M4 flows softened a little further and were £3.0 billion; private non-financial corporations’ (PNFCs’) M4 flows picked up to £3.5 billion, and were above the recent average flows.
Sterling lending to the UK private sector excluding intermediate other financial corporations, M4L^ex, increased by £14.8 billion in March (Table A), with positive net lending to all sectors (Tables B-D). Lending to households was little changed on the month, while lending to PNFCs and non-intermediate other financial corporations (NIOFCs) picked up on the month.

Lending secured on dwellings rose by £3.1 billion in March, similar to the recent average (Table H).
Approvals of loans secured on dwellings for house purchase and remortgaging both fell slightly for the second month, to 66,837 and 42,814 respectively, in March (Table I).
The flow of consumer credit was in line with its recent average in March, at £1.6 billion (Table J).

PNFCs’ net finance raised from UK monetary financial institutions and capital markets was £2.5 billion in March (Table L). The largest contribution to net external finance was bond issuance, at £2.3 billion.
The value of loans extended to non-financial businesses was unchanged, overall, in March: a £0.4 billion increase in loans to SMEs was offset by a fall in loans to large businesses (Table M).